OurType Eva is a typeface designed by Merel Matzinger and Fred Smeijers. Eva is a sanserif, but one that defies the popular image of a sans. It is informal and warm in character, thanks to the contrast in its strokes and the freedom with which they have been drawn. The friendly personality provides added interest at larger sizes. Yet its forms also have a notable clarity, and it works well for setting continuous text. Eva can be used in a wide variety of contexts, from personalised messages to mass-circulation publications.

The name of the typeface comes from the ceramicist Eva Zeisel (born in 1906 in Hungary). It was the delicate, humane forms of Zeisel's industrially produced ceramics that gave inspiration to Merel Matzinger as she designed the first, one-weight version of Eva in 1999. Eva Zeisel's ceramics are warm and approachable for their fluid curving lines, for their simplicity, but also for their playful, whimsical nature. Indeed, it is Zeisel's 'playful search for beauty' that is the crucial connection between her and her audience. It is Matzinger and Smeijers' hope that the Eva typeface achieves a similar feeling and a similar connection.

Eva finds a distinct place among existing 'informal sanserifs'. The contrast it shows between thick and thin strokes is less marked than with designs such as Optima or Pascal. So too the flairs at the terminals of its strokes are less marked than in the case of Optima. One could position it somewhere between these 'semi-sanserifs' and typefaces like Gill Sans, Scala Sans or Fresco Sans, which we now identify as belonging to the category of 'humanist sanserif'. The variety in the ways in which the stroke terminals are treated gives Eva much of its character.

The Eva family comes in six weights, in roman and italic designs, with Latin Extended character sets that include non-lining figures, small capitals, fractions, superior and inferior characters, and a full range of accented characters.

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